As secretary to Sir Gilbert, young Dryden learned to scan the
political horizon, and to aspire to preferment.
CROMWELL'S DEATH, AND DRYDEN'S MONODY.--But those who had depended upon
Cromwell, forgot that he was not England, and that his breath was in his
nostrils. The time of his departure was at hand. He had been offered the
crown (April 9, 1656,) by a subservient parliament, and wanted it; but his
friends and family opposed his taking it; and the officers of the army,
influenced by Pride, sent such a petition against it, that he felt obliged
to refuse it. After months of mental anxiety and nervous torture--fearing
assassination, keeping arms under his pillow, never sleeping above three
nights together in the same chamber, disappointed that even after all his
achievements, and with all his cunning efforts, he had been unable to put
on the crown, and to be numbered among the English sovereigns--Cromwell
died in 1658, leaving his title as Lord Protector to his son Richard, a
weak and indolent man, who, after seven months' rule, fled the kingdom at
the Restoration, to return after a generation had passed away, a very old
man, to die in his native land.
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